As Sir David Attenborough turns 100, he is celebrating a landmark career that has shaped the BBC, the environment and the very world we live in.
And there’s one man who has had a front row seat for the past four decades.
By the 1970s, the legendary conservationist and wildlife presenter was fast establishing himself as a household name – helming BBC shows such as The Tribal Eye, Fabulous Animals and, notably, 1979’s Life On Earth.
It was the latter that inspired a wide-eyed Alastair Fothergill, 66, to study Zoology and enter the wild world of wildlife documentaries, leading to a 40-year partnership with Sir David (and counting).
Now, to mark Sir David’s centenary, the wildlife filmmaker has painted a heartwarming picture of the national treasure and the hard work he does ‘behind the scenes’ to Metro.
‘I remember very vividly being utterly gripped by it… evolution is the greatest soap opera in nature,’ he says about the docuseries that shaped the course of his life.
After joining the BBC Natural History Unit, he was introduced to Sir David on his landmark show about animal behaviour, Trials of Life, in 1988.
About those early days, he recalls: ‘I travelled the world with him. Those days, David would do four, five, six months a year on the road, and us directors would follow along.
Directing David Attenborough at 27
Sharing a memory from the first time he directed Attenborough, aged 27, he fondly reminisces: ‘The great man arrived – this was in Brazil, on the banks of the river Amazon – [and] I was asking him to dive with electric eels. Electric eels famously stunned their prey with an electric shock, and David was quite nervous about that.
‘I said: “Don’t worry, we’ve got a rubber suit for you to wear so you will be fully insulated.” I wasn’t sure whether it would work, but I told David that.’
This is just one of the many awe-inspiring, occasionally frightening, occasionally exhilarating tales Alastair has collected over the years.
He talks of the ‘extraordinary moment they filmed ‘chimpanzees hunting monkeys’ for the first time (‘everybody thought they were vegetarians!’) or the ‘breathtaking’ time in the Malaysian mangroves when they were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of synchronous fireflies.
This job is far from smooth-sailing. ‘Obviously people don’t see the pain because they just watch the final show,’ he says, wryly.
During one shoot for Trials of Life on Australia’s Christmas Island, the Bafta-winning documentarian had to convince the Australian Air Force to fly him over after all commercial flights were cancelled so they could capture ‘David literally up to his thighs with these extraordinary red crabs that are coming to the beach to breed.’
In another: ‘When we went to the North Pole, just as we were taking off to fly home, the ice beneath our camp split up, and our camp went into the sea. I could talk to you all day about all the things that went wrong.’
Despite travelling the world twice over, even a veteran adventurer still has a bucket list. ‘If you were to ask David, I think he often says, [he wishes he’d gone to] Mongolia. He loves fossils, and Mongolia’s got some of the best dinosaur fossils on the planet.’
Still, from the incredible experiences they have had, they were all enhanced by Sir David’s diligent work ethic, dubbing him ‘very demanding of himself.’
David Attenborough on and off screen
‘He never ever lost his temper with me. I never saw him lose himself with anybody, actually. But you knew that there was a professional level that he expected of himself, and you had to keep up with it. I always found rising to David’s standards was really inspirational,’ he shares.
The million-dollar question is, of course, what Sir David is like when the cameras stop rolling, but Alastair is quick to say that what you see is what you get.
‘He’s famous for his boyish enthusiasm on camera. He’s equally enthusiastic off camera. Socially, he’s amazingly good fun. He’s not a star in any sense of the world, we go to some very tough, demanding, uncomfortable places.
‘He likes a glass of red wine, he likes some nice chocolate, but don’t we all.’
In fact, his ‘celebrity’ status is perhaps the aspect of his life he shuns the most.
‘At the moment, when suddenly he’s in the spotlight so much because of his 100th birthday, he’s not liking this at all. To the extent that he hasn’t done any interviews with anyone because of that.
‘There is an event at the Royal Albert Hall [tonight] that the BBC are doing, but he’d far prefer to be at home with a glass of wine.’
Creating legendary shows like Blue Planet
After establishing themselves as a duo throughout the 90s, they embarked on several flagship nature series together that remain globally known to this day – Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet.
‘Blue Planet, actually, at the time, was a very large risk,’ Alastair shares about the trailblazing 2001 documentary delving into the vastly underexplored deep ocean.
Despite uncovering never-before-seen animals, there was still apprehension at the BBC.
‘For David, Blue Planet was the very, very first series he ever narrated, but didn’t present, so that was a big breakthrough. Up until then, he’d always been in vision, done all his famous pieces to camera, but his diving skills were not great enough to present an underwater series, so we went without him.
‘I remember very close to the transmission on BBC One, the then boss said: “I’m really worried about this series, Alistair, it’s eight hours on fish, and David isn’t in vision”,’ he recalls.
In the end, ‘the audience didn’t notice’ because ‘David’s voice was so famous by then.’ If anything, it proved a pivotal point in his career.
‘David has said to me in the past: “Thank you for extending my career.” Obviously, as he’s got older and older, he’s travelled – I took him to the South Pole and the North Pole when he was 84 – but in his 90s, he stopped travelling largely, and so narration has been his way of continuing work.
‘He loves work. People love him working. His voice has always been so powerful.’
Nowhere is his superpower stronger than when he is railing against the adverse impacts of global warming on climate change – a movement he has always been ‘careful’ about approaching.
‘Early on, David didn’t do [environmental commentary]. A lot of environmentalists were criticising him. Then we just filmed a snow leopard in the wild for the very, very first time, and I remember David saying to me: “You can’t care about something you don’t know about.”
‘He felt, and I totally agree with him, that for every new generation, there is a role to celebrate nature, to explain nature, so people know what they may be missing.’
‘The first time he started really talking about it actually was on Frozen Planet,’ he reflects about the primetime BBC show from 2011, which looked at global warming’s impact on the Arctic.
Alastair Fothergill on David Attenborough’s legacy as he turns 100
After such a decorated career, there’s no end to Sir David’s achievements, whether visually documenting animals that have since become extinct or introducing new audiences to the natural world.
‘The final legacy, I think, is the environmental legacy. People don’t know what he does behind the scenes.
‘The Cabinet Office asked my team to take him to COP in Glasgow, and he gave the opening speech to all the world leaders. Unbelievably powerful. He wasn’t paid a penny to do it. He was in his 90s.
In Davos, he was interviewed by Prince William when we launched Our Planet, and that became the Earthshot Prize.
‘He’s done so much behind the scenes, unpaid for the planet, and that’s an amazing legacy that he probably wouldn’t talk about, but I think should be recognised.’
So, what does the future hold for the TV star who is showing no signs of stopping? From his recently released Wild London to A Gorilla Story – there’s always more stories to tell.
‘David has always said he never wants to stop working. He feels very privileged that, into his 90s, people still ask him to work for them.
‘He actually believes his mental and physical health is to do with the fact that he has continued working and the fact that he was carrying camera bags and tripods all his life.
‘He was always the first person to pick up a heavy weight and help the cameramen. But I don’t think anybody can say what the future will be when you get to 100.’
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